Newt: Hillary shows courage, integrity

The leader of the 1994 Republican revolution — who as House speaker in the mid 1990s clashed fiercely with then-first lady Clinton and her husband, Bill Clinton — attributed her surprise victory in New Hampshire to the Democratic presidential candidate’s courage, integrity and openness.

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After Clinton’s third-place finish in the Jan. 3 Iowa Democratic caucuses, “it would have been very easy for her to have broken, accepted defeat,” Gingrich said in a weekly podcast e-mailed to supporters.

“Instead, starting on Saturday night, she fought back with greater and greater intensity, and she opened herself up," Gingrich went on. “She talked as a person, without all the protection, without all the discipline, and she became more and more appealing.”

Gingrich said that shift demonstrated “the courage to learn” and enabled the New York senator to grow “in the space of three or four days to a much more attractive, much more aggressive and much more appealing candidate.”

As a result, he posited, New Hampshire voters who made up their minds at the last minute “were going to Sen. Clinton, were affected by her campaign, by her integrity, by her openness.”

Gingrich’s podcast, one of many products cranked out by his political groups, also had similarly high praise for Arizona Sen. John McCain, who won New Hampshire’s Republican presidential primary.

But Gingrich’s fawning over Clinton stands out more, given their history.

After Bill Clinton became president in 1993, Gingrich, then a Republican congressman from Georgia, orchestrated the defeat of one the new Democratic administration’s signature initiatives: a universal health care plan led by Hillary Clinton.

Headed into the 1994 elections, Gingrich seized on the failed plan to highlight the excesses of a Democratic-led government. And his message, manifested as the Contract With America, was credited with driving the Republican takeover of Congress that year.

Gingrich then became speaker and the public face of the GOP’s often bitter opposition to the Clinton administration, culminating in the 1998 impeachment of the president.

Gingrich’s relationship with Hillary Clinton warmed, though, after he resigned from the House and she was elected to the Senate. They worked together on a health care plan and a military readiness panel, and each had kind words for the other.

Since she became a presidential candidate, his public comments have vacillated between admiration and contempt.

Gingrich, an analyst for Fox News, has repeatedly voiced his respect for Clinton’s political acumen and organization. But he has also called her “a nasty woman,” asserted she looked “foolish” in calling for repealing congressional authority for the Iraq war and branded one of her campaign ads “dishonest,” “destructive,” “fundamentally false” and “the height of hypocrisy.”

When he briefly flirted this fall with running for president himself, he justified it by warning of dire consequences of a second Clinton presidency.

“I love the stuff I do, in terms of writing books, and giving speeches. ... It's a wonderful life,” he told Fox’s Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes. “But I am very worried about the future of the country, and I do think we have to offer a change-oriented conservative alternative to Sen. Clinton if we're going to be able to keep this country from going very far to the left.”

At one point last year, he handicapped Clinton’s chances of becoming president at 80 percent. But in November, he predicted a big win for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama in the Iowa Democratic caucus. And last month, in an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Gingrich downgraded that to 50 percent, “because she has really underperformed in a way that surprised me.”

He went on to advise her not to attack Obama but instead to counter his message of change by launching “the strongest possible appeal to women” on the grounds that “electing a woman president is in and of itself is the real change.”

Clinton did almost precisely that after her disappointing Iowa finish.

And in his podcast this week, Gingrich said Clinton was able to defeat Obama in New Hampshire “by arguing that her 35-year record of fighting for change was better than his immediate promise of future change.”

The Iowa and New Hampshire results, Gingrich said prove “the American people are certainly committed to real change.” Which got him to his next point: a book he wrote titled ... “Real Change,” which he told listeners is scheduled for release next week and will “outline exactly what we need to be doing.”